2007 January

Here’s an interesting question to pose: Are most bloggers reaching out to the world because they are lonely? I don’t really believe this is the case myself. Granted, I’m sure that there are those individuals out there who are blogging as a not-so-subtle cry for help, but over all I think people blog because they […]

This series of postings combines puzzles, paradoxes, decision theory, statistics, and probability. This subject grouping is not arbitrary, but represents much of what I think is valuable in the world. Everyone likes to work puzzles, but not everyone likes to work the same type of puzzle. Every time we learn something new, we have solved […]

There are so many aspects of networking that you need to be aware of, and so many of them sing the same song when something’s broken that it can be one of the most frustrating experiences. In this series of articles, I will walk you through a helpful process for troubleshooting network connection problems and […]

Having worked as a process manager and tech writer in software development for over 10 years, I ran into the problems covered in Five common errors in requirements analysis.
Problem 1: Customers Don’t Know What They Want
This is often true because much of development has to do with technology that’s beyond the customer’s knowledge. In […]

Today I received an email from a Phishing schemer trying to convince me that they were Amazon. Tired of this, I decided to see how deep this scam actually went. After investigating the header information, doing some backtracing, I was able to determine the following.
The source Web site is funhumour.net. It appears to be legit […]

If I had a magic wand, I would take Novell’s resources and Ubuntu’s (Canonical) vision and see the birth of a single Linux product. Each entity has half of it right and the other half of it totally wrong. Novell understands the needs of the enterprise situation while Ubuntu has the DPKG system for software. […]

This past Saturday, I had a couple gigs up on Chicago’s North Shore. These two customers were literally just down the street from each other, which always makes it more worthwhile to hike up there (it’s really not all that far). The first customer just purchased a Brother Multi-Function Laser Printer (she expressly did not […]

The Call for Participation is now open for Ubuntu Live, the first official conference dedicated to this award-winning and popular Linux-based operating system. The three-day event will aim to give participants all the knowledge they need to explore and set in motion the powerful features in Ubuntu and related applications. Program chairs are building an […]

It kills me that the critics are STILL trying to group the iPhone’s value into the realm of unrelated devices such as the Blackberry. At the same time, some writers understand this and have reported on the matter with plenty of accuracy. Even punits such as Dvorak, have given their critique regarding the usability of […]

Why is it that when a piece of hardware fails, it has to bring a friend? A couple days ago, one of my across-the-street neighbors contacted me. His roommate’s PC was blue-screening repeatedly every time the PC completed the boot process. He goes on to e-mail me some info from the BSOD and informs me […]

Andrew Cumming is a big fan of SQL; he says it’s elegant, well designed, and phenomenally useful…but it’s not always easy to use: “You can do incredibly powerful queries in just a few lines of code, but then other times you have to tie yourself in knots just to get something trivial done.” With coauthor […]

Discover why this global Fortune 500 company chose the PGP Encryption Platform to protect corporate and customer information. Covers compliance, risk mitigation, solution requirements, and the successful results.
Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) has more than 55,000 employees - and handles high volumes of sensitive corporate and customer data every day. Now, find out why deploying […]

An organization should have a clear policy laid down regarding criteria and procedures to be followed while selecting technology. The policy should also spell out individual roles or departments authorized to select a particular technology.
Policies have to be laid down for purchasing, acquiring, and installing technology. This issue concerns vendor management. It includes policies and […]

If you are into Linux application programing (GTK tool kit type stuff), then we need to talk. As I prep to launch a second project of my own, I have decided the best way to launch my soon-to-be Linux project would be to solve the multiple monitor problem with Ubuntu once and for all. The […]

Monitoring blogs for your company information helps you stay on top of what others say about your business. But what if they say something bad about your product or service? The Dallas Morning News reported on how a local chocolatier ran into this problem, and really, the company doesn’t need a blog. Thanks to ten-part […]

Understand how companies are using ESB to drive innovative business strategies as SOA continues moving mainstream.
SOA Business Breakout: An Insider’s Guide to ESB Success: A July 2006 InfoWorld survey showed that more than 40% surveyed are planning an SOA deployment in the next 6-12 months, and a critical technology for this is the Enterprise Service […]

Net Activity Diagram lets you monitor and control your network traffic. Visualizing your Internet activity is simple - the program is easy, even for inexperienced users. You can view all established connections, monitor network traffic over a certain period, set up various notifications, etc.
Use tray icons and floating diagrams to see the network bytes […]

Bargain IT, the specialist UK Cisco reseller, has recognized a difficult problem which sometimes faces IT managers, especially in larger companies. When installing a complete system, where is the best place to start?
The professionals there know that a systems approach begins with a single, resilient platform such as Cisco integrated services routers. A systems approach […]

I could hardly believe this product was still around, what with broadband becoming so commonplace these days. But sure enough, it looks as if CallWave is still out there and kicking. Man, it seems like just a short time ago I was using them pre-broadband to manage my own incoming phone calls on a shared […]

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